The following message has been forwarded to all registered PO.DAAC users on
behalf of the KNMI Scatterometer Team.
Please direct all related inquiries to scat@knmi.nl.
Dear wind product user,
The OSI SAF and EARS ASCAT wind products will be upgraded on Tuesday, 18
September.
Apart from some minor bug fixes, the main change will be the implementation
of a Bayesian sea ice screening algorithm, based on probabilistic distances
to ocean wind and sea ice Geophysical Model Functions. The current ASCAT sea
ice screening is based on the ECMWF Sea Surface Temperature information. We
have seen that the new algorithm is better capable to distinguish between
open water and sea ice, especially during melting and freezing.
The main change on product level will be that the new wind products contain
wind solutions also over sea ice regions. These bogus winds are flagged both
by the KNMI quality control flag and by the ice flag. This is contrary to the
current products where wind vector cells over ice do not contain wind
solutions. Hence it is important that you reject any winds with the KNMI
quality control flag set when ingesting the products.
Note that wind vector cells that are rejected due to rain, only have the KNMI
quality control flag set. On the other hand, wind vector cells that are
rejected due to sea ice, have both the KNMI quality control flag and the ice
flag set. See the ASCAT Wind Product User Manual, section 6.2 (http://www.knmi.nl/scatterometer/publications/pdf/ASCAT_Product_Manual.pdf
) for more information on the quality flags.
Best regards,
Anton Verhoef
--
KNMI Scatterometer Team
http://www.knmi.nl/scatterometer/
For global wind products:
EUMETSAT Ocean and Sea Ice SAF
http://www.osi-saf.org/
For scatterometer processing software:
EUMETSAT Numerical Weather Prediction SAF
http://www.nwpsaf.org/
For timely ASCAT regional wind products:
EUMETSAT EARS ASCAT service
http://www.eumetsat.int/Home/Main/Satellites/GroundNetwork/EARSSystem/
For other scatterometer matters contact: scat@knmi.nl